How to have a conversation with your daughter about weight
As Honey Ross opens up about dieting in childhood, Tanith Carey offers some healthy advice for parents
Even now, 10 years on, I can still remember the cold, white fear I felt when my daughter Lily, then eight, announced she was putting herself on diet.
A friend had called her “fat” during a playground quarrel, so “no”, she announced briskly, she wasn’t going to have her usual crumpet for her tea.
First my mind went blank. Then it felt like I was stepping into a minefield. As it turned out, it was to be the first skirmish in a long and challenging battle to keep my two daughters feeling good about their bodies in a culture in which they are constantly bombarded with negative messages about how they look.
As a parent, I know I am not alone. So who among us didn’t feel a twinge of sympathy this week for Jonathan Ross, the TV presenter, and his wife Jane Goldman after their daughter Honey revealed they tried to suggest diets when she felt unhappy about her weight as a teenager?
On the ITV panel show Loose
Women, Honey Ross, a 23-year-old writer, activist and now proud advocate of body acceptance, said she had “hated her body” from a young age. Her parents “tried to give me solutions to a problem I brought to them, which was to lose weight. They presented me with diets and diets, as we know, don’t work and are absolutely toxic,” she added.
Honey is absolutely right that dieting does not solve weight problems; it often creates them, and 95 per cent of them fail. But in a world where health concerns about obesity have never been more feverish – especially now it has been shown to increase the risk of death from Covid-19 by almost 50 per cent – many parents feel at a loss for what to say when faced with the most difficult question a teen will ever ask: “Do I look fat in this?”
And it’s something more parents are struggling to find the right words to answer, as it’s feared that more children than ever have slipped out of their healthy BMI range, thanks to boredom snacking and a more sedentary lifestyle during lockdown.
Indeed, as author of the books Girls Uninterrupted and What’s my Teenager Thinking?, I would go as far as to say that knowing what to say in these moments has become the single most difficult tightrope to walk in parenting.
After all, we are raising children in a nation of two extremes. On the one hand, the UK has one of the highest rates of childhood obesity in Europe: around one in five children aged 10 to 11 is classified as such, and seven out of 10 overweight 11-year-olds go on to become obese young adults.
Yet we are almost struck dumb by the crushing responsibility to get the messaging right. If we say the wrong thing – or overdo the healthy eating too much in our own homes – we may be tipping our children towards an eating disorder like anorexia or bulimia. Social media means they are already growing up in a distorted hall of mirrors, in which they are exposed to more images of “physical perfection” than at any other time in history. Even if your daughter or son isn’t on Instagram or Snapchat, their peers will be.
My daughter Clio, now 15, has told me how, even at primary school, lunchtimes were turned into contests to see who could eat the least, where girls sat in judgment of each other’s plates and lunch boxes. Forgoing dessert and loudly announcing this self-denial to your peers was a badge of honour within a classroom hierarchy where the slenderest girls perched on the top.
But there’s also another elephant in the room: and that is that many parents secretly fear that having an overweight child is a reflection on
To the killer question ‘Am I fat?’ there is no right answer
them – making them feel like failures for being neglectful.
So, how should parents broach the subject, especially if they fear there is a genuine cause for concern? First, check your own attitudes. We live in a body-conscious world. Is it possible your child has simply slipped outside of your mental template for how they should look?
Children’s shapes are constantly shifting as they move towards adulthood and girls, in particular, can put on 20 per cent of their body fat during puberty – and often put on weight before a growth spurt. So be careful not to jump the gun by fretting unnecessarily.
If your child comes to you with the killer questions: “Am I fat?” or “Have I put on weight?” there is simply no right answer. Every parent’s instinct is to rush to deny or reassure, but listen carefully, acknowledge their feelings, and resist the temptation to either agree or disagree.
Above all, avoid the diet trap. Research has also found that young people feel good about their bodies when their parents emphasise the positive ways they can keep a healthy weight, not when they limit or forbid certain foods (they are likely to do the opposite and seek them out, to exert their independence).
At a time when your child is not upset, talk about how it’s up to them to make choices that will support their body.
Encourage them to work out for themselves when they feel hungry, and to think about when they are just eating because they feel bored or sad. Beyond that, if your son and daughter genuinely need to lose weight, the best way is for the whole family to work on reducing portions and increasing exercise, so no one feels singled out. Tell your child that if they want to change how much they eat and exercise, they are not alone and you will work on it together. As Honey Ross, who has so deftly brought this most difficult struggle for families out in the open, said herself: “I think compassion and kindness are the most incredible gifts to give a child. Even if you do want them to lose weight, when has shaming ever been a motivator?”